Review: The Big Sick

Romantic comedies traffic in conflict. It's not necessarily the will they or won't they, but rather how will they despite all the reasons favouring the won't they. In The Big Sick, cultural conflicts and a coma are the obstacles on the table for our couple, Kumail and Emily.

Kumail is played by Kumail Nanjiani, the Pakistani stand-up comic and actor best known for his role in HBO's Silicon Valley. The tale is a deeply personal one for Nanjiani and real-life wife Emily V. Gordon, who use their own fairly unusual courtship as the basis for the film, which appears to follow the typical template of romantic comedies before steering into infrequently explored corners of the genre. There's the meet cute as Emily (Zoe Kazan) attends one of Kumail's stand-up gigs. When he later playfully admonishes her for heckling his act, explaining that heckling can encompass both positive and negative comments, she jokingly retorts that if she had said he was an amazing lover, then that would have been considered a heckle? "It would have been an accurate heckle," he responds.

Though each declare that they're not looking to be in a relationship, it's abundantly clear that one is inevitable. The warm and charming chemistry between Nanjiani and Kazan immediately establishes how the characters are a perfect fit for one another and the emotional stakes in the subsequent conflicts that arise become even more heightened. Emily reveals that she was once married, but her secret is nothing compared to Kumail's. Not only has he not told his family about her, he was been letting his tradition-minded mother continue to arrange "dates" with eligible Pakistani women. Kumail tries to explain the situation to Emily - "You know what they call arranged marriages? Marriage." A love marriage with a non-Pakistani woman would mean being disowned by his family. Emily, sensing that they won't ever have a future together, breaks off the relationship.

And here's where things get even more interesting. After several weeks apart, Kumail gets a phone call that has him rushing to the hospital where Emily has been admitted for a lung infection and he has to sign a permission form for the doctors to put her in a medically induced coma so that they can administer the proper treatment. When her parents Terry and Beth (a very fine Ray Romano and a scene-stealing Holly Hunter) arrive on the scene, they quickly dismiss him but he opts to stay and his evolving relationship with the initially chilly couple, who are well aware of everything that happened between him and Emily, truly elevates the film into something special.

The film possesses such a tremendous warmth and generosity that it's all but irresistible. Like Aziz Anzari with Master of None, Nanjiani manages to extract humorous insight out of the minority experience in America, particularly post 9/11, but he also deftly conveys how, despite the differences, everyone shares the same experiences of dealing with family, falling in love, and making one's way in the world.

The Big Sick

Directed by: Michael Showalter

Written by: Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon

Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff, Adeel Akhtar, Aidy Bryant, David Alan Grier, Bo Burnham